The Columbus analogy is fairly persuasive, but it ultimately it rests on the assumption that things in the future are more or less bound to work the way they have in the past. Long-time readers will know that I am not overly attached to that particular assumption.  For example, I think that it’s likely to get us in a lot of trouble where automation replacing jobs is concerned. In the past, whenever technology eliminated jobs, it created more jobs in the process. But that might not go on forever, and our assumption that it will is a very risky one, especially with the work force shrinking ever smaller. Likewise, the fact that governments have traditionally sponsored the earliest missions that open up new frontiers doesn’t mean that it always has to work that way.

In any case, there is an argument to be made that the government has already done its job in opening up the frontier of space. They have demonstrated that we can send human beings into space and to land on other worlds (Apollo.) They have demonstrated that people can live and work in space long-term (Mir and ISS). And they have done yeoman’s work in exploring, mapping, and generally getting to know the very planet that Elon Musk wants to go to: Mars.

Tyson talks about how the first mission is always carried out by the government. But here’s the thing: Mars is not virgin territory. We’ve been going there since the 1960′s, landing there since the 1970′s. We just haven’t been going in person. Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t have the option of sending unmanned probes out to prove that you can reach Asia by sailing west. Give them that option, and assuming that a hypothetical Renaissance-era unmanned probe would have cost less than three ships plus crew plus supplies, that’s exactly how they would have done it.

Also, Tyson makes no mention of Planetary Resources, the company that plans to start mining near-Earth asteroids for profit in the near future. What are the risks? Who are the investors? What’s the ROI? These aren’t just rhetorical questions. People are seriously working out the answers to them as we speak.

Via technology, capabilities that once belonged only to large nation states and mega-corporations are being passed into the hands of ever-smaller entities and individuals. Increasingly we may find that small private initiatives are not only a workable way to get humanity into space; they may well be the best way to do it.

His name is Joseph Kittinger. He made his astounding leap from the US Air Force experimental craft Excelsior III some 52 years ago,  on August 16, 1960. You may have seen Kittinger recently (or at least heard his voice), as he was in charge of mission control communications for Felix Baumgartner’s successful space jump — which finally, after all these years, broke Kittinger’s records for skydiving altitude and skydiving speed.

It’s less likely that you’ve heard of Nick Piantinida, who broke Kittinger’s record for high-altitude ballooning on February 6, 1966, reaching 123,500 feet in his balloon named Strato Jumper II. Unfortunately, Piantinida’s attempts at beating Kittinger’s skydiving record were unsuccessful; he was severely injured in his final attempt and died shortly thereafter. But his ballooning record held for some 46 years, until earlier this week when Baumgartner topped him by less than a mile.

All of which raises an interesting question about Baumgartner’s amazing achievement: why now? Why has it taken all these years to add 4500 feet to Piantinida’s altitude and 115 miles per hour to Kittinger’s speed to finally deliver the ultimate, supersonic, feat of skydiving?

The reason it’s taken so long is that we’ve been waiting for someone willing to put up the money–someone willing to make it happen. I have no doubt that the Air Force could have broken Kittinger’s record decades ago if they had seen any point in doing so. But they aren’t in the business of performing crazy stunts and setting records. Red Bull, on the other hand, is a huge promoter of extreme sports. They are all about the crazy stunts. In this project they saw an outstanding opportunity to build awareness of their brand, so they were happy to pony up the cash needed to make Baumgartner’s jump possible.

Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing. As de-industrialization continues to push capabilities that once belonged only to large governments into the hands of smaller enterprises (think Red Bull in this story, but also think SpaceX) or even individuals, the relentless compounding of improvements opens up all kinds of possibilities. As with the introduction of the cardboard bicycle, most of the elements needed to make Baumgartner’s jump possible were already in place. All that was needed were a few supporting bits of technology and the will to make it happen. 

The will is the real clincher. If you have enough of that, you can get the technical stuff working. In this world there has always been a lot more will to do extraordinary things than capability to support that will. What we are witnessing today is the early stages of a capability explosion. This will inevitably lead to a possibility explosion — so many people doing so many extraordinary things that we will have to constantly recalibrate  what we mean by “extraordinary.”

How long before anyone who wants to can recreate Baumgartner’s amazing jump? And how long before some corporation or individual recreates Neil Armstrong’s giant leap?

This week NASA announced that the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, may soon reach interstellar space — if it has not done so already. Let the star age begin!

Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon discuss the significance of this milestone and explore how and when humanity might truly begin to venture to the stars.

Topics & Links

One teeny-tiny drawback: this would not actually be a starship:

This “Gen1” Enterprise could get to Mars in ninety days, to the Moon in three, and “could hop from planet to planet dropping off robotic probes of all sorts en masse – rovers, special-built planes, and satellites.

For a ship longer than the Burj Khalifa is tall, those speeds sound a little on the pokey side, don’t they?

On the one hand I think it would very cool indeed if we had such large manned interplanetary craft operating in the next few decades. On the other hand, what is described is no starship enterprise. I don’t care if it’s a little smaller, but to be effective it’s going to need to be quite a bit faster.

Plus, we continue our discussion of  Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s new book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than Yout Think, which argues that we are much closer than most people think to solving some of the oldest and most intractable problems we have faced — including poverty, hunger, disease, and violence.

We explore the role that dematerialization plays in bringing those changes about. Dematerialization is a powerful force and maybe something of a double-edged sword. What challenges and risks do we face in making the move from a scarcity-based to an abudance-based world?

About Our Guest:

Newt Gingrich is a  politician, author, and political consultant. He represented Georgia’s 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999, and served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Gingrich is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

In the 1970s, Gingrich taught history and geography at the University of West Georgia. During this period he ran twice (1974 and 1976) for the United States House of Representatives before winning in November 1978. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.

A co-author and architect of the “Contract with America”, Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him “Man of the Year” for “his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House”. While he was House speaker, the House enacted welfare reform, passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, and in 1998 passed the first balanced budget since 1969. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional election and pressure from Republican colleagues caused Gingrich’s resignation from the speakership on November 5, 1998, and then the House on January 3, 1999.

Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks, including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written or co-authored 27 books.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Join us:

Wednesday February 1, 8 PM PST 11 PM EST

Wednesday February 1, 8 PM PST 11 PM EST

Image via Wikipedia

If a family’s one-and-only car is retired – and the family has no idea when they’ll have another car – wouldn’t that be considered, generally, a very bad thing for the family?

It seems sad to me that the last shuttle mission just took off and the next-gen space ship isn’t back in the hanger getting a final coat of wax.

Sure it is. It’s just not in the NASA hanger — it’s over at SpaceX.

Dragon is a spacecraft developed by SpaceX, a space transportation company based in Hawthorne, California. In December 2010, it became the first spacecraft ever placed in orbit and recovered by a private company. The first operational Dragon missions will be flown for NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Dragon is designed to carry up to seven people, or a mixture of personnel and cargo, to and from low Earth orbit. These flights will be contracted under the Commercial Resupply Services program.

Dragon’s heat shield is designed to withstand re-entry velocities from potential lunar and Martian space flights

…

In June 2009, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated that the company planned to conduct the maiden flight of the Dragon spacecraft in 2009, and have the capsule enter service in 2010, before the scheduled final flight of the Space Shuttle.

…

On December 8, 2010, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an unmanned SpaceX Dragon lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on COTS Demo Flight 1. The launch was a success, and the Dragon cleanly separated from the Falcon approximately 10 minutes after launch. Three hours of orbital maneuvering testing were conducted at an altitude of 300 kilometres (190 mi; 160 nmi) before a deorbit burn was conducted, putting the Dragon on a re-entry course that ended in a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi; 430 nmi) west of Mexico’s Pacific coast.

Related articles

• National Geographic celebrates the last space shuttle mission ever (gadling.com)
• STS-135 Atlantis Space Shuttle Launch [Video] (arkhilario.com)
• Space X Dragon Spacecraft Returns To Florida (gcschileastronautics.wordpress.com)

Diamandis, of course, is founder of the X Prize Foundation. He thinks the privatization of space travel is about to open up something of a gold rush.

Diamandis sees a promising price improvement curve as what used to take one billion dollars and twenty thousand people to get a space shuttle into orbit can now happen with “a team of twenty people funded by a single individual.” In the evolution of space travel, he says “the military industrial complex of Boeing, Lockheed and NASA are the dinosaurs” and today’s entrepreneurs are “the furry mammals.”

Sounds good to me. Let’s evolve!

Diamandis, of course, is founder of the X Prize Foundation. He thinks the privatization of space travel is about to open up something of a gold rush.

Diamandis sees a promising price improvement curve as what used to take one billion dollars and twenty thousand people to get a space shuttle into orbit can now happen with “a team of twenty people funded by a single individual.” In the evolution of space travel, he says “the military industrial complex of Boeing, Lockheed and NASA are the dinosaurs” and today’s entrepreneurs are “the furry mammals.”

Sounds good to me. Let’s evolve!

Image via Wikipedia

NASA is dreaming.

Laser and solar power are more interesting alternative fuel choices for spacecraft.

And you have to love the flying space robots. We’ve been waiting for those..

Image via Wikipedia

Brian Wang provides some more insight:

The 100-Year Starship study is trying to create a vision that makes business sense yet will motivate generations to development and create manned interstellar spaceflight. Develop a business case and an enduring organization.

The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned spaceflight a century from now. This goal will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources. The yearlong study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed.

This is starting to sound interesting. On the one hand, I love the idea of long-term, multi-generational projects. We need a lot more of that sort of thing.

On the other hand, how can we prepare for a technological accomplishment 100 years from now? Imagine the world of 1910 planning a trip to the moon, which of course occured only 59 years later. How could people living in a world where steam-powered locomotives and ships were the height of technology, a world that had only known airplanes for seven years, possibly come up with a working model for getting to the moon? 

Actually, Jules Verne outlined a plan for getting to the moon in 1865, which we can round off to an even century before Apollo 11, nearly 40 years before the Wright brothers made their first flight. Sure, Verne got some pretty important stuff wrong, but it’s intriguing how much he got right. So maybe trying to outline a spacefaring project 100 years hence isn’t a bad idea – as long as we keep it pretty broad and don’t get married to details like method of propulsion. (Verne proposed a cannon firing a space capsule in the form of a huge artillery shell.)

But there’s a wrinkle: technological acceleration. The year 2110 may be a much more remote future from here than 2010 was from 1910. Even if the “big S” singularity doesn’t occur between now and then — in which case all bets are off – a few developments in nanotechnology and energy production could render our most lucid scenarios as quaint as Verne’s cannon.     

Image via Wikipedia

It’s tantalizing in its lack of specificity:

NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete” Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,” with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA.

“You heard it here,” said Worden at “Long Conversation,” a Long Now Foundation event in San Francisco. “We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund,” Dr. Worden added. (No further details on this are available from NASA at this time.)[Emphasis added.]

So what might be the goal of a project with such an auspicious name? We can only imagine that it’s to produce a starship over the course of a century.

A century is both a useful and a misleading unit of time to use for such a project.

It’s useful because, as we have discussed on recent editions of the podcast, the technology challenges that would have to be overcome to produce a true star drive are immense. Brian Wang talks about us getting to interstellar capability by working our way up the Kardashev Scale. Plus, it’s good to think in terms of centuries because — even with starships that can achieve a substantial percentage of light speed — trips to anything but the closest of stars will take hundreds of years to complete. 

On the other hand, a century is a long time from now, and an awful lot can change between today and 2110. Progress in parallel disciplines might have a lot to say about how and whether we ever undertake star travel. Depending on what happens, a century might become an infinitely long period of time.

Image via Wikipedia

Phil and Stephen discuss the implications of the discovery of the first potentially habitable planet
outside the solar system. What does the existence of Gliese 581g imply
about the existence of more such worlds? What does it tell us about the
potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

If we’re ever to travel to a planet such as 581g, how will we get there? And what will motivate us to go?

 

Listen to internet radio with The Speculist on Blog Talk Radio